Comparison of Austria & Israel by Rev. Cyril Summers

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This is one of a series of four short Thought for the Day talks that Revd Cyril Summers recorded for Gwent Radio.

Good Morning. Yesterday I was saying that everything has its beginning in thought and, if we want to change our world, we must change our thinking until it begins to conform to divine thought.

About four years ago, my wife and I enjoyed our first holiday abroad, and it coincided with an invitation to speak at a peace conference in Austria. I was a little surprised to see a signpost pointing to Prague and I realised we were not far from the Czech border. Our host informed us that the Yugoslav and the Hungarian borders were, in his words, ‘just down the road’.
It was before the tremendous changes had taken place in Eastern Europe and for the first time, there, in Central Europe, I felt vulnerable. I could well imagine the communist armies massing on the frontier, just down the road and I asked my host how Austria intended to defend those frontiers, and he just laughed. ‘There is no way we can defend those frontiers.

All the armies and all the weapons in the world cannot defend us. There’s only one thing we can do, and that is to make friends. Are there not Russians, Czechs, Hungarians, Yugoslavs here in the conference? Our only defence is to change our enemies into friends.’

During these last few weeks, we have been thinking of Israel and her vulnerability and insecurity and the terror that Scud missiles have created by their deadly destruction.

The frontier is no barrier to Scud missiles and other weapons of modern war. There is no way Israel can defend her frontiers and protect her people from terror and death except by making her enemies her friends. That would require a fundamental change in thinking, in feeling and in will by the Israelis.

Could it mean loving your enemies? It’s a thought.